Exploring Humanity Blog - Exploring Humanityhttps://www.exploringhumanity.org/blogexploringhumanity/Thu, 06 Sep 2018 23:44:36 +0000en-USSite-Server v6.0.0-16499-16499 (http://www.squarespace.com)Bird Watching, Kayaking, and Relaxing at Blueberry Garden CottagePacific NorthwestIngrid McQuiveySat, 29 Sep 2018 15:56:23 +0000https://www.exploringhumanity.org/blogexploringhumanity/2018/9/2/bird-watching-at-blueberry-garden-cottage5b0413be9f87701b3fd4bae6:5b043e3e6d2a735b97101e6e:5b8c40be40ec9a2651e1fcd9The inside of the cottage was the color of blueberries and sunshine with
country french accents and a mix of American vintage. A cloud of cozy white
blankets covered a queen bed.Trish’s story:

The inside of the cottage was the color of blueberries and sunshine with country french accents and a mix of American vintage. A cloud of cozy white blankets covered a queen bed. An ebony clock with a curved base swept into an elongated neck and attached to a rounded face with two tiny hands. My best friend, Trish, and I had just arrived on a girl’s weekend near Independence, Oregon, and was exploring our rental, Blueberry Garden Cottage.

I pulled on a small knob at the clock's base. “Hey, Trish! Look!" I said. "The clock opens.” Books with yellowed pages and a collection of various CDs sat on small shelves. I spotted a Celtic mix and noted it for later.

“Ann Marie used to have a Swedish clock (Mora Clock) like that,” Trish said, remembering a mutual friend. “I always wished I could have it. The clock was given to her daughter after Ann Marie passed away.”

“She was a good woman,” I said, as I explored a mini kitchenette and its cabinets. My mind wandered to a time when Trish and I ate Swedish meatballs at Ikea with Ann Marie. I made my way to a decorated window and looked outside. Rows of blueberry bushes filled the front yard. A rabbit nibbled on one of the branches. I thought, Ah, it’s Peter Rabbit, and turned to make myself a cup of tea.

***

Trish and I pulled on our shoes and began to walk down a long, gravel lane away from the cottage. The fresh air of a recent rain shower brushed across my face. A rolling landscape of vineyards and evergreens encircled us with deep serene. A bird flitted. Trish suddenly called out the name of the bird and startled me. Years before she used to be into birding, now she was more of a bird-watcher. Traveling with Trish almost always included the identification of birds.

I pulled out my phone and pushed a recording app with my finger. I lifted the phone to her face. “Repeat it,” I said.

 Creative expression, whether that means writing, dancing, bird-watching, or cooking, can give a person almost everything that he or she has been searching for: enlivenment, peace, meaning, and the incalculable wealth of time spent quietly in beauty.

“So, the bird you just saw, that’s a Purple Martin," Trish said as the ground crunched under our footfalls. She pointed to another bird. “We have a Robin right in front of us. We’ve also seen a Downy Woodpecker, Brewer’s Blackbird, and a Northern Flicker."

“Why are you recording us?” she said and motioned to my phone.

“I’m going to write about our story," I said, overlooking Christmas trees planted in a perfect grid. "I’m going to blog about this experience."

“Our story goes back over a decade," she said. "I remember recording our story in a few spots. I remember being on the airplane waiting to head to San Francisco. We were journaling that one, too.” She stopped speaking, leaned in, and lowered her voice. “Look. There’s a Grouse."

A few moments later, we spotted a Hawk, and the conversation turned to random things, like chopping down Minecraft Oak Trees with your hand.

Binoculars are helpful, but not required. The best ones tend to be heavy. Nautical supply shops have a great selection.

Learn to identify birds by their silhouette. Most bird family groups (wrens, swallows, etc.) have a unique shape. Often, a bird will be backlit, so the outline may be the only thing you have.

Don't try to recall the whole bird. Look for distinguishing marks: stripes on the head, wing bars, beak shape or color, and size. For example, almost all sparrows are small and brown. They can be distinguished by the color and number of stripes on their head or wing bars.

A short history of independence, oregon:

On the west bank of the Willamette River, sits the City of Independence, Oregon. Twelve miles southwest of Salem, it was once known as the “Hop Capital of the World” from the late 1890’s to the 1940’s. The first settlers set out on wagon trains to the Oregon Trail, loaded onto boats at the Columbia River, then met up with the Oregon Trail again until arriving in Independence in June of 1845.

The new settlement was initially named, Missouri town of Independence. Being next to the Willamette River, Independence flourished until a significant flood in1861. Businesses were destroyed. After, the residents rallied and rebuilt a new town on higher, flatter ground. During the following decades, the city flourished, and you can still shop in the original buildings today.

One of my favorite things to do is frequent secondhand book shops and look for photography art books. Second Chance Books was located on Independence, Oregon’s, historic main street.

After this burst of activity, Independence settled into a quiet existence until an explosion of the hop industry. By 1946, Independence’s hop industry had grown to such enormous proportions, that it became “the center of the most concentrated hop district in the world.” Each hop harvesting season brought about 40,000 to 50,000 hop pickers. Eventually, the hop market slowed down, and Independence quieted back into a daily bustle of small-town charm.

When visiting Independence, you can follow a walking tour of the 30-block Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places. The area still retains much of the early character and architecture from the 1880’s to the 1920’s.

five things to do:

After Trish and I visited Independence, I returned with Dave. Below is a recap of our weekend and things to do.

Kayak the Willamette River. I recently kayaked the Willamette River with my husband, Dave. If you want to follow our route, launch your kayak at Buena Vista Park and ride down to the banks of Independence. The section of river we kayaked, was almost all natural with little commercialization and lots of wildlife. Depending on your pace, the trip will take three to five hours. The river’s current runs about five miles per hour with a mix of flatwater and light rapids. If you like to kayak-camp, study the Willamette River Water Trail. There are several areas for you to set up camp along the shore. One campground is at Riverview Park in Independence. Also, if you have time, you can ride the local Buena Vista Ferry that crosses the river near Buena Vista Park.

Eat at Independence Grill and Bar. After kayaking, we ate at Independence Grill and Bar. Both of us had fresh burgers made with quality ingredients. When you bite into them, the beef, toppings, and condiments slightly ooze over your fingers. I’d say the burgers were a close contestant to Calamity Jane’s in Sandy, Oregon. We rarely eat beef at home, or when going out, but these burgers were worth the exception.

Take a self-guided walking tour of the Independence Downtown Historic District. Your tour begins at the plaza of Riverview Park. Initially, we were a little confused on where to go for the tour, but eventually discovered historic photos with captions inside the downtown’s shop windows. There were also historical markers posted in the plaza at Riverview Park.

Check out Independence’s festival calendar. We finished our kayaking adventure with a deluge of rain, and accidentally stumbled upon Independence’s Hops and Heritage Festival in the historic district. We were too tired and wet to check out any of the activities, but the next day we found hops remnants on the streets (see photo below). Independence has several festivals throughout the year.

When Trish and I stayed at Blueberry Garden Cottage, we found a feather on our walk and left it inside the cottage. When Dave and I returned, there were several feathers stuck in the fence near the cottage’s entrance.

Early one morning, I grabbed my camera, tiptoed out of the cottage, and ventured down the dirt and gravel road.

If you have a few moments, please share this blog post.Thank you!

Also, all photography is mine unless source link is posted. Please remember all content is copyrighted.

Until next time - Cheers!

-Ingrid

]]>Bird Watching, Kayaking, and Relaxing at Blueberry Garden CottageFloating Homes, Chinook History, and Kayaking Lake RiverPacific NorthwestIngrid McQuiveySun, 09 Sep 2018 11:09:43 +0000https://www.exploringhumanity.org/blogexploringhumanity/2018/9/6/port-of-ridgefield5b0413be9f87701b3fd4bae6:5b043e3e6d2a735b97101e6e:5b91bbe44ae237e8cd667215I paddled my kayak past the floating homes lined up along the shore of the Lake River. A slight breeze generated peaks upon glistening water. The sun warmed my cheeks. I studied the Ridgefield, Washington, homes floating next to me. There was an entire co-culture living on the water.

I paused and placed my double-bladed paddle across my kayak, and half-leaned my body over a rounded, plastic edge. My hand cupped cold, river water and I splashed it on my bare legs. Refreshed, I kicked my feet from inside the kayak and propped them onto the floating nose in front of me. The river’s current guided me. The call of a bird broke the silence.

Straight ahead, a man stood on a buoyant deck attached to a floating home and monitored a dropped fishing line. How does the home float? I thought, as I dropped my paddle alongside the kayak to push against the surrounding water and move it forward. Minute marks passed and the kayak glided in front of the fisherman's deck. “Hi,” I said. “Do you mind if I interrupt your fishing to ask how your house floats?

The man stood up out of his chair and shuffled toward one edge of the deck. He smiled and lifted a finger to direct my gaze. “Do you see the large logs under the house?" he said.

“Yes,” I said as I leaned forward, squinted my eyes, and looked at the old-growth cedar logs supporting his home.

“Well, the logs keep the house afloat. The wood can last fifteen to fifty years. Part of the log has to be above the surface, the other part submerged in water, allowing the water to soak into the wood from below and evaporate into the air." A long stride led him to his fishing line. "I purchased this house two years ago. I had eleven logs replaced," he said.

“Wow! How do you do that?" I asked.

“Scuba divers placed the logs under the home," he said.

According to the website Portland Waterfront Properties: "Many of the older floating homes in the Portland market were constructed using "old growth" cedar logs, which were cedar logs of unusually large diameter. Today's floats are built using the largest diameter logs the builder can obtain. The logs run the length of the float and are tied together using wood or steel "stringers" that are installed perpendicularly across the top of the logs to create a building platform.

”Older log floats were usually built by cutting ’notches’ into the top of the logs to accommodate the installation of the stringers. This notching method made it difficult to level the float. It often became necessary to add ’shims’ below the stringers to help level the float." - portlandwaterfrontproperties.com

A stray hair tickled my face. I wonder how much that cost? I thought. My new friend said, "Most of my neighbors have some connection to the water." He shared aquatic stories. I listened. Suddenly, he said, “Have you ever been to the Big Paddle? It’s the first Saturday in June?”

“No, I’ve wanted to go in the past, but couldn't make it. I’m hoping to go this year.” I said and backpaddled my kayak trying not to hit his dock.

“You should. The Chinookans have a long, wooden boat they bless before the event. After, they ride along the river. Around three hundred kayakers participate. The city provides a guide. The guide will show you where Ospreys nest, " he said.

My eyes brightened with a smile. I said, “I would love to write about that. I’m a travel writer and photographer."

The first kayaks were not massive pieces of rotomolded polyethylene - plastic - or fiberglass. Earlier kayaks, created by the Inuit (an Arctic people), were Eskimo light boats with a wooden frame covered with hairless sealskin, used as hunting equipment. Kayaks - or ‘qajaq’ as said in Greenland - became an essential part of Greenlandic culture and migratory roots. The literal translation for qajaq is “small boat of skins.”

“I traveled the world when I was young,” he said and delved into a tale of globe-trotting excursions never recorded. I thought, There were no social media accounts or travel blogs when you traveled. For years, people sold everything they owned and traveled the world. It isn’t a new thing.

“You said your name was Kirk, right?” I said, moving my paddle forward against the water.

“Yes, it’s Kirk. Like Captain Kirk.” he grinned, with his attention slightly diverted to his dropped fishing line.

I chuckled and said, “It was nice to meet you, Captain Kirk. Maybe I’ll see you on the first weekend in June.”

He yanked on the line and pulled a small fish out of the water. He said, "Look! I caught one!"

"That's great!" My voice trailed off as I paddled away.

The sun sank into the horizon. My kayak glided across the river's flowing water. A large dog and his master sat in their metal boat and floated past me. Birds flew overhead. A slight breeze cooled the air. I moved my head from side to side and stretched my neck. I imagined myself stooped over a keyboard writing a story about the floating home neighbors of Ridgefield, Washington.

KAYAKING IN RIDGEFIELD:

Drive down Main Street in Ridgefield, Washington, and you step back into a bygone era of pioneer history. Incorporated in 1909, but established by indigenous natives - The Chinookan Peoples - The City of Ridgefield welcomes you with tree-lined streets and homes that belong in storybooks. A handful of shops tempt you to spend money on coffee, antiques, and local fare. Every first Saturday during the year there is a celebration of Ridgefield's heritage and community.

A BOY HAD JUST FINISHED A PIE EATING CONTEST AT THE RED, WHITE, AND BLUE FESTIVAL. THE FESTIVAL IS HELD THE FIRST SATURDAY EACH JULY.

A first Saturday event my family attended was The Big Paddle on Lake River. The event is in conjunction with National Trails Day and has several activities at the waterfront: vendors, live music, a wine and beer garden, and an obstacle course for families. It is not a large festival, so if you are looking for numbers, you will be disappointed. The festivities on the waterfront are free. You will need to pay a small fee to register for the Big Paddle on Lake river. You can bring your own kayak or canoe (there were also a couple of SUP boarders.) or register for a seat in a 30’ Canoe or a Chinook Canoe.

Once on the water, you will paddle to a specific spot before stopping your boat. There, you will float and listen to Chinook history from an ancestor of the Chinookan Peoples. One thing I wished the City of Ridgefield would have done is set up a microphone on the speaker. There were a lot of people on the water, and at times, it was difficult to hear him.

The speaker said about a Chinook paddling ritual, "It takes four days to get to the Columbia River. The reason it takes four days is that's what Coyote told us. It takes that long because we are visiting all of our ancestors, your relatives as you go down the river."

You will most likely talk with other kayakers as you paddle by them.

One fellow kayaker, Lisa, said about the plastic cluster of gliding kayaks, "The scene looks like colorful dragonflies doing their dance across the top of the water."

Beth provided a helpful hint about an off-shoot from Lake River to the Columbia. She said, "kayak it at the end of July through the end of September. No speedboats are allowed during that time. Because of that, you will see more wildlife." Her husband, Nick, gently waved his arms as he described seeing a bald Eagle bathing a few feet in front of them when kayaking the area from late summer to fall.

The Big Paddle was a kayaking day trip. If you are interested in kayaking for multiple days, research the Lewis River-Vancouver Lake Water Trail Paddling Guide published by Vancouver-Clark Parks and Recreation. Often, hiking trails are highlighted throughout the Pacific Northwest, but rarely the water trails that fill the area.

TIDBITS IN A SNIPPET:

1) After kayaking, eat at the historic Sportsman's Steakhouse and Saloon located in Ridgefield. The food is made fresh, and the atmosphere relaxed. I've never felt uncomfortable wearing my kayaking grubbies.

2) Not hungry? Warm up with local coffee or hot cocoa at The Old Liberty Theater. If you have time, check out their events schedule, as the 1946 theater is still active.

THE OLD LIBERTY THEATER IS THE YELLOW BUILDING BEYOND THE FLOWERS.

3) Are you staying more than one day? Head to the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. If you are a photographer, bring a lens for wildlife photography. Not a photographer? Tour the Cathlapotle Plankhouse - a replica of a Chinook plankhouse - at the Refuge. The house is an educational and interpretive center open weekends and on a seasonal schedule.

THE RIDGEFIELD NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE

THE CHINOOK PLANKHOUSE

4) Be prepared for construction when visiting. The neighborhoods of Ridgefield are growing.

AN OLD CHURCH DOWNTOWN RIDGEFIELD

5) Another water activity is to fish along the Lake and Columbia River. You can launch your boat from the Port of Ridgefield.

Note: I am currently working on a compiling a list of Travelstoke kayaking spots to be published by Matador Network . Watch my social media accounts or sign up for my new newsletter to be notified when the list is published.

]]>Floating Homes, Chinook History, and Kayaking Lake RiverA Day With Brno's Award-winning Restaurant OwnersCzech RepublicIngrid McQuiveyFri, 27 Jul 2018 00:25:32 +0000https://www.exploringhumanity.org/blogexploringhumanity/2018/7/26/brnoczechrepublic5b0413be9f87701b3fd4bae6:5b043e3e6d2a735b97101e6e:5b59ce776d2a737675509782I stood in the center of Brno’s historical city center, Zelny Trh Square, in the Czech Republic, and cursed my lack of wifi. I was on a self-guided tour to interview the restaurant winners of Gourmet Brno 2017 and needed to map out my route. My first stop was Café Momenta. Fruit, vegetable, and flower vendors of Cabbage Market Square bustled around me, as my eyes scanned the area for the restaurant. Within a few moments, I spotted a charming cafe with awning-covered windows and walked to the entrance.

Owner: We specialize in a mix of Belgium and French-style homemade cakes and sweets made from the highest quality ingredients.

How is Café Momenta unique?

We buy fresh fruits and vegetables at Cabbage Market Square - the farmer’s market located right outside our door. We strive for local and organic produce. If we are missing ingredients, we buy it from the market. The market is open every day but Sunday.

What would you like people to know about your cafe?

The first thing is we use local food. Secondly, we hire people who are highly qualified with excellent customer service. We look for people who care about their job. We ask our bakers’ opinions about the desserts. The staff has ideas. We listen to them. Everyone has the opportunity to taste the desserts and approve them.

Every month we offer new desserts. About forty percent of our desserts change according to the season.

Do you offer other menu items?

Our coffee is unique. Every time we select new desserts, we choose coffee to pair with it.

A wide array of coffee is served, mostly from small roasters. We use only the best coffee. We have coffee from Germany and Hungry, amongst other places.

Every day you will find 14 to 16 types of freshly baked and decorated cupcakes packed in original boxes.

Me: How did Cupcakekárna get its start?

Owners: It wasn’t the goal to have a restaurant, at first we wanted to have a coffee shop, but decided there were too many coffee shops in Brno. We began to research and discovered Brno did not have a cupcake shop. Cupcakekárna was the first specialty cupcake shop in the Czech Republic.

How do you select your bakers?

The task was easy. We just had bakers make cupcakes, and we tasted them.

Our bakers are self-taught. We believe this is an advantage in our field. The main thing we looked for were people who were passionate about baking. Their education wasn’t necessary for us.

What are your favorite things about Cupcakekárna?

We enjoy the relationship we have with our customers. We love when they taste our cupcakes and express how good they are. Also, our staff. Amongst us, there is good cooperation and teamwork.

We also take pride in the cream we use on our cupcakes: Mascarpone Buttercream. It is different than a US buttercream. It's lighter.

Do you change your menu?

Every month we change our menu. We sell sixteen flavors, with five new flavors a month. We bake according to the season. In summer, we bake with fresh fruit. In the fall, we may use cinnamon or apples. We like the idea of using different flavors, colors, and fruit for our cupcakes.

Designs, colours, and amusements; experience it all in one place almost 24/7.

One of the Owners: 4rooms represents four parts of a day. We are opened twenty-two hours and the day begins with breakfast. Next, comes our lunch menu. We offer two vegetable dishes and two classic meat meals. After, is our coffee and drinks after work. We begin the fourth part of the day with our dinner menu. It starts at seven and kicks off with a party atmosphere.

We’ve only been opened six months (in 2017). This is the first time this point of view has been created. Its a mixture of coffee, a cocktail bar, breakfast cafe, and bistro. We are cooking for twenty-two hours.

What type of food do you offer?

We have a variety of food: Mexican, Czech, Asian cuisine. We work with fourteen chefs to offer customers different foods from different places. Sometimes we add traditional Czech food without twists. Our menu is always changing.

How do you prepare your food?

We strive to make everything from scratch, without preservatives and additives. Everything is homemade. All from scratch. For example, we have homemade sausage, buns, mustard, and ketchup.

We are really proud of our roast beef. The roast beef is marinated in mustard for seven days. An egg benedict with an Asian twist is our most popular dish. It is named after Pope Benedict 17th: Egg Benedict 17th. It’s a poached egg on roast beef with ginger mustard, soy sprouts, and cheese, mixed with an Asian twist.

What inspired the design of 4rooms?

It took us one year to design 4rooms. We transformed an ugly space and made it look new. The furniture, bar, lighting was all uniquely designed for our restaurant. There are seven different types of wood on our floor. Our bar is not linear like most - it is fluid. A craftsman crafted the steel and leatherwork on our bar stools. We call the stools, “Cowboy Chairs.”

Note: This post does not cover all of the Gourmet Brno 2017 winners. I am currently working on dictating more interview feed for another post. Thanks for reading!

PIN ME]]>A Day With Brno's Award-winning Restaurant OwnersMy Chat With Captain DanPacific NorthwestIngrid McQuiveyThu, 31 May 2018 22:35:31 +0000https://www.exploringhumanity.org/blogexploringhumanity/2018/5/31/my-chat-with-captain-dan5b0413be9f87701b3fd4bae6:5b043e3e6d2a735b97101e6e:5b10033288251b1ccbfdefebOn the bridge of the S.S. Legacy ship, I sat across from Captain Dan Blanchard. Dan—once a Washingtonian, now a man of Alaska—was spending the week cruising the Columbia and Snake river in the Pacific Northwest. When I met Dan the day before, I had not guessed he was the owner of the ship and UnCruise Adventures—a small ship adventure and river cruise line. He had mingled amongst passengers and quietly introduced himself as “Dan.” Now, unpretentious, and authentic in charm and jovial mannerisms, he rotated the white captain’s chair where he sat and chatted with me about his life and company.

Moments earlier, before Dan arrived, Scott, the full-time Captain of the S.S. Legacy, reached his hand to the ceiling above his head and pulled down a set of triangular handles. The extension of the handles set off a series of shrill sounds—whistles. One whistle had a tale behind it: a high school basketball game, a red wagon, and a blow horn attached to the ship whistle. Scott was in the middle of the tale when the hinges of the bridge door squeaked. Captain Scott’s voice raised. “Wait. There he is right now. His ears were burning,” he said, as Dan arrived.

Dan said, “Oh, that was for Ingrid. Did you blow the whistles?” He chuckled and sat down in a chair between Scott and myself.

I smiled and shook my head. “No, it wasn’t me,” I said.

Scott motioned to the handle above his head. “I was just going through your whistles and the story of you being expelled from high school for three days,” he said.

Dan confirmed the legendary tale with a mischievous grin and nod, and Scott’s rich guffaw erupted into bridge's open space.

I studied Dan for a moment. A white beard, cut close to his face, wrapped around his jawline and highlighted his sharp blue eyes—eyes that reminded me of my father’s. I said, “Is the S.S. Legacy the first ship you bought?”

He said, “No, but I’ve had a relationship with the boat since she came out with another company to the West in 1987 or 88. I spent a little time with her during the [Exxon] Valdez oil spill in 89. This boat was the communications vessel in the oil spill recovery team.” He lifted his hands and placed them behind his head.

I readied my pen, and said, “What is special about the ship—things a passenger wouldn’t know?”

His voice lowered, softened. “Two of the tables in the lounge belonged to my grandmother,” he said. A moment passed before he continued. “There’s a tribute to a guy who was a mentor to many of us. It is a picture of a young aviator named Chuck West during World War II. He owned this boat at one time. It was his favorite vessel.

When I got the ship, he had passed away. We got the family to give us pictures of Chuck and on the other side is a picture of Marguerite, who was Miss Alaska in 1937. The jacket outside the manager’s office is his jacket,” he said.

“Oh, I saw the coat. It was in a frame."

Dan’s voice filled with sentiment. “He was the father of Alaskan tourism post-World War II. He was a hell-of-an energetic, wonderful man. I worked for him for twelve years,” he said.

Silence permeated the room. I scribbled the last of his nostalgic words. I looked up from my notebook, and said, “Why do you call your company UnCruise Adventures?”

He complimented my question, and said, “In 2007, we started to rejig our model to more of an adventure base. After a three-week stretch of cruising with travel writers and 'industry folk,' they began to refer to the cruise line as the 'Uncola.' The experience was the antithesis of what was offered on large cruise ships. A couple of writers began to use the term, 'UnCruise' and it stuck. So, when we rebranded, we went with UnCruise Adventures.”

He added, “When I go down to Seatrade and give a talk, here I am in the midst of Mega cruise lines speaking about small, niche cruising, and I have to tell them right off the bat, ‘You aren’t my industry. My industry is more the adventure and small group travel.’”

My thoughts turned toward the day we disembarked from Portland, Oregon, and said, “Your other ships are adventure-based. Why did you decide to make the S.S. Legacy along with the historical lines of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery?”

“This trip has a history and exploration model to it, because of the physical location of where we are. However, as you learn on the trip, there is a whole history of salmon and agriculture. There is a whole other flip beyond Lewis and Clark, about the Native cultures here. You look at all the rolling hills of the Palouse area, and you think, Wow, who could have lived here?. But these were rich, rich areas for native people for tens-of-thousands of years. And that’s another piece when you are on the Columbia and Snake river you need to talk about because it is part of the local color,” he said.

As he spoke, he was direct, but not intimidating. His eyes stayed with mine, and I noted it was easy for him to look people in the eye when addressing them. He folded his arms. “One of the reasons there is so much detailed information is because the Columbia watershed was the largest watershed for salmon, bar none. Bar none!” he repeated himself with force. His voice cracked, and tears welled in his eyes.

He paused, then continued, “If I get a little emotional when I’m talking this way, it’s because I’m so into what is happening with salmon recovery in the world. The very dams that are allowing us to travel on this river are the dams that have reduced the amount of availability of salmon that get upstream. And the pools that we are traveling on right now when they get warm in the summer make it more difficult for the fry to survive, as well if they go downstream. There are certain complications, and I’m not going to jump out either way and say, ‘tear down the dams or keep them,’ but the modern world has encroached on the largest watershed known to humankind. We think about Alaska and the Reds up north, and we like to believe that is the all-time threshold for salmon, but it was here.”

I rolled my car to a halt on a backcountry road in Yakima, Washington, opened the door and stepped out. My elongated and distorted shadow streamed across an open field directly in front of me. A nearby orchard burst with multiple shades of cotton-candy pink and white amongst a labyrinth of twisted branches. All around me, Yakima Valley farms glowed with the golden light of dusk.

***

It was the evening of the Travel and Words mixer. I moseyed over to a table, picked up a food sample, and began to chomp on a mini portion of chips and fresh salsa. “This is delicious," I said, and extended my hand to a man in a white apron. "I'm Ingrid. What is your name?"

"I'm Chris," said the chef. He shook my hand.

I looked around and noticed a postcard with the name, Guerra's Gourmet Catering, on it. “Tell me about your catering business," I said, opening myself to a lengthy, yet entertaining, conversation about a classic red Chevy and sourdough bread.

”The longer you allow your sourdough starter to ferment, the sourer it becomes. Use it when it is young, and your sourdough will be sweeter, ” Chris said during our chat. A small loaf of lightly browned bread sat in a basket next to him. He picked it up, sliced a sample, and handed it to me. I placed it in my mouth and bit down.

“I see what you are saying,” I said, and finished chewing. The loaf had a mild tang with a sweet twist.

“Your flour makes a difference. The fresher your flour, the better your bread," Chris said. “I use a special flour, ground from a 2000-year-old grain species. It is grown right here in the Yakima Valley.”

“Wow!” I said as the aroma of oven-roasted pizza from another food vendor wafted our way. The smell reminded me of my husband's fleeting dream of owning a pizza restaurant.

He continued, “I wanted to use local, fresh, organic ingredients from the Yakima Valley.”

I nodded in admiration. A fellow travel writer walked up and stood next to me, and Chris educated us on roasting water out of asparagus.

]]>Eating Sourdough Bread With ChrisA Viking King, A Crisis of Faith, And Twenty-Five Years of MarriageSwedenIngrid McQuiveyWed, 23 May 2018 02:46:35 +0000https://www.exploringhumanity.org/blogexploringhumanity/2018/5/22/ao0no5gx4j4kobwb35rs3frzv59sx35b0413be9f87701b3fd4bae6:5b043e3e6d2a735b97101e6e:5b04d2d06d2a736439fc1682My husband Dave held a visitor center’s map of Sigtuna, Sweden, in his hands. Viking runestones marked the route, across a paper landscape of Sigtuna. We were on a search to find the stones embedded around town. Our twenty-five-year anniversary trip in Sweden ended tomorrow, and we still had not discovered remnants of our Viking heritage.

Dave pointed to a small square drawn on the map. “Let’s start here,” he said. I waited. “Then, let’s go this way.” He ran his finger along a series of ebony slashes, a walking path, and turned to follow it. My footfalls stepped in line with his, along a primeval path littered with century-old businesses. Dave had an excellent sense of direction—much better than my own—and over the years, I had learned not to question it.

The dotted lines of the map led us to the manicured grounds of a quaint, medieval church bearing the name of St. Mary’s. Red brick with an exterior facade of blind arches decorated the sanctuary constructed in 1255. A Viking runestone marked a corner across a gravel driveway near a cemetery of beveled markers formed of crumbling stone.

Unmoving, and without a word, we stood in front of a runic inscription engraved with incised and carved patterns painted in red. Brawny Scandinavians, wearing leather and hyde, equipped with swords or battle axes, leaped through my thoughts. I pictured Barbarians as they raised the runestone in honor of its owner, the sacred inscriptions unknown to me. I wished for an understanding of the language. I swung my camera from my side and recorded the runic alphabet ingrained into the rock.

After, the runestone map led us to an age-old rock next to a shambled place of worship and another one perched high on the wall of crumbling sanctuary dating back to the Middle Ages. Informative plaques translated the runic inscriptions found on the memorial stones. In total, there were fifteen runestones on the walk.

A cobblestone sidewalk surrounded the last stone amongst the residential homes of Sigtuna. I lowered my head and read the information board next to it:

“Runestones are not gravestones in the usual sense, but memorial stones. Most of them are explicitly Christian monuments, whether they bear crosses or not. The Viking Age tradition to erect memorial runestones began in Denmark c. 965 when King Harald Bluetooth had just been baptized, and to mark the arrival of a new age, he commanded the construction of a memorial runestone” (Sigtuna Museum).

A smile lit up his face and I grinned in response. I said, “Point to Harald Bluetooth’s name on the board, and I’ll take your photo.” I lifted the camera viewfinder to my eye. Dave straightened his posture and posed for the picture. “We have to tell your sister about this when we get home.” I clicked the camera shutter multiple times.

Silence fell upon us. I thought about the Viking king and how he had shed a lifetime of pagan rituals and beliefs for Christianity. Questions about Harald Bluetooth overwhelmed me: Why did he do it? Was his decision the root of chaos or peace amongst his people? Were his family and friends angry about his decision? Did his decision divide them? Or did they support and sustain him as a great Viking king?

Dave and I questioned a religion which defined almost five decades of our lives. Our crisis of faith and twenty-five-year anniversary had shared the same year. Now, in front of a plaque about Harald Bluetooth, my doubts, and fears toward my faith swelled. I thought, Harald Bluetooth was not much different than so many of us today. Even a mighty Viking king was trying to find his way.

Dave interrupted my thoughts. “Ingrid, let’s go down this narrow street.” He motioned to a small road in front of him. “It leads to the water.”

“Okay,” I said and gathered up my camera equipment. Dave waited for me, then without asking, took the camera backpack and swung it over his shoulder. The sun dropped and brisk air rushed in as layers of wheat gold appeared in the sky. The afternoon light glowed around his silhouette. My hand slipped into Dave’s familiar grasp as we moseyed to a weathered dock and reflected upon ancient Vikings.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin]]>A Viking King, A Crisis of Faith, And Twenty-Five Years of MarriageCruising the Snake RiverPacific NorthwestIngrid McQuiveyWed, 23 May 2018 02:23:19 +0000https://www.exploringhumanity.org/blogexploringhumanity/2018/5/22/cruising-the-snake-river5b0413be9f87701b3fd4bae6:5b043e3e6d2a735b97101e6e:5b04cf83352f53cc9e1b76a9

Servers wore salmon bow ties, maroon button-downs, and ebony aprons tied at their waist, as they scurried to serve UnCruise Adventure passengers in the dining room. The ship was the S.S. Legacy, and it cruised along the Snake River in the Pacific Northwest. I sat alone in a large diner booth, next to an oversized picture window, and scribbled notes in my travel journal.

Casey, the ship manager, shuffled past me and noticed I was alone. He stopped, returned to my table, and asked, "Are you alright? Do you want your daily tea?"

I brushed back a stray piece of ebony hair, and said, “I’m alright. Thank you for asking. I wanted to record the movement of the dining room in my journal. I can’t concentrate when I’m distracted by other passengers." I clicked the top of my pen with my thumb. “You have my lunch order, don’t you? I'm sorry I was late."

He nodded in understanding of my need for privacy and said, “Yes, we have your order.”

"Thank you," and I turned to watch the bustling scene of food and conversation in front of me. It was like a choreographed dance. Wine glasses raised. Laughter filled the room. Passengers leaned forward to listen to other passengers. Jerrid, a thin, genial waiter, approached my table. He laid down a perfect arrangement of crisp romaine leaves mixed with boiled egg, red onions, blue cheese, and bacon next to me, and said, “Ingrid, I’m your cabin steward for the week. If there is anything special you need, please let me know."

He remembered my name, I thought, and I expressed my appreciation.

He left, and I set my pen on the table and replaced it with a fork. A few moments later the owner of the cruise line, Captain Dan, and his partner, Meghan, strolled by my table. Dan asked, “Ingrid, do you have anyone to sit with you?”

I finished a bite of salad, then smiled. "I requested to sit by myself," I said. "I wanted to write."

They both nodded. “We just didn’t want you to be sitting alone,” Dan said.

I expressed my thanks and they moved to the booth directly in front of me. I watched them interact for a brief moment, then turned to gaze out the window at the current landscape. Layers of barred sediment rose out of the water and streaked across the natural elevation of the earth's surface. I reflected upon this morning’s geology presentation by one of the UnCruise staff. My eyes searched for columnar basalt formations along the mountains, and I discovered the remnants of what was once a thick lava flow. Captain Dan spotted the natural formations too and announced his discovery to the passengers in the dining room. Someone exclaimed in response, “It looks like big pipes of an organ.”

“It looks like a cathedral,” Dan said.

Casey balanced a round serving platter covered in purple cloth. He gathered long-stemmed glasses abandoned on a table and stacked them onto the shallow disc. The glasses reminded me of transparent soldiers. I watched him disappear behind a swinging galley door. The smell of fresh food from the kitchen wafted through the air behind him. Across the room, binoculars raised. Glasses filled with scotch found searching lips. A woman rubbed the shoulders of her partner, and a diner pointed toward the landscape and said, “Look how the basalt columns have become rolling hills.” The ship slowed, and we all peered through thick layers of glass in reverent awe at the scenery.

Dave wiggled into long johns, and I covered my hands with touchscreen gloves. It was the morning of Advent Sunday, and we were in Sweden for the celebration of our 25-year anniversary, and in honor of our Scandinavian heritage. We pulled on leather boots to finish our layers and whisked out the door to Stockholm’s nearby metro station. The directions to Skansen—“the world’s oldest open-air museum, showcasing the whole of Sweden with houses and farmsteads from every part of the country.”—were highlighted on Dave’s cellphone screen, and we stopped to study them.

Electric Advent candles—usually in the number of four to nine, supported by inverted wood triangles—and sizable, nine-pointed stars glowed from the windows of several homes. The irradiation of light captured my attention. I stabilized my footing on ice and thought I need to buy one of those Christmas stars before I leave. Days later, in Gamla Stan, I would purchase a cardinal-colored cardboard star with a printed pattern of snowflakes.

***

A plethora of different people waited in multiple lines for admission to Skansen. We chose one and stood at the end. Dave reached into his coat pocket for a tight, raven-colored, ski cap. He shivered and pulled it onto his head. “Is the spider straight?” He asked.

“No,” I said, as I reached up and straightened the hat. Dave stood still, and in a few seconds, his attention diverted to a Swedish girl of toddler age who played next to us. He studied her clothing. "Look how all the children have one-piece snowsuits and winter boots to keep them warm,” he said.

A wisp of hair tickled my jaw, and I brushed it away. "I know. And all of the edges of the children's hoods are lined with fur.”

The girl’s short, raven hair swished along her cut cheekbones and highlighted a tiny, upturned nose. She climbed onto a nearby bench, which wrapped around a tree trunk. Her father stood at her side and allowed her the freedom to explore. I resisted the urge to reach out and support her back as she balanced on the bench’s icy seat while the ticket line moved forward.

When we entered the grounds of Skansen, we found a rambled mixture of provincial farm buildings with multi-colored metal roofs and sides wrapped in weathered, wood planks. Inside the homes and shops, historical interpreters in period clothing mimicked a rural Sweden from the past. Our first stop was the glassmith's workshop. Children's covered heads bopped up and down behind a safety wall to watch the formation of a molten-glass Santa. I raised my heels and shot my camera over their round heads.

Mid-morning came and went as we strolled to the blacksmith's shop, the bakery, the furniture maker, and the book binder's room. Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes and lingonberries filled our plates at lunch. After, melodic lyrics summoned us to Skansen’s Christmas market where a robust band projected Yuletide ditties. Our fingers weaved around visiting stranger's, and we formed a skipping ring-circle around a tall Fir tree. Strands of white lights ran vertically along its branches, and a simple star adorned its top. Children danced and raised their hands as reindeer antlers on their heads. Adults joined them.

Nearby, shoppers flitted from stall to stall around the market. Outdoor fire pits warmed bodies, and bonfire smoke, and mixed with the roasted aroma of sugar-coated almonds. Long, vintage coats made of a wolf's fur covered male merchants. Wool coats and fingerless gloves warmed the women. Folk costuming in brilliant greens and reds appeared from under their winter wardrobe. Swedish words bounced around and were unfamiliar to us, but the joyful celebration of Christmas was universal.

Scandinavian Christmas celebrations are rooted in the paganism of the Old Norse. Many of their holiday symbols stem from these roots. The Yule goat may be connected to the Norse god, Thor, who circumnavigated his chariot through the sky by two goats, Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr. These straw goats bedecked the market.

A legion of handcrafted gnomes—another holiday symbol of Sweden—crowded a stall at the end. Rounded torsos made of wood, and wrapped in white felt, steadied the creatures. Long, snow-white beards—like soft cotton—extended from red cones glued to rounded heads. Pipe cleaners protruded as legs into a pair of miniature wooden clogs. We approached the woman selling the gnomes, asked her price, and purchased two. She wrapped the gnome in a delicate, bone-white tissue paper and we waited. Dave picked up a dwarfish creature near him and studied the artistry. He said, "Did you make these?"

She smiled and answered in English. "Yes."

"You did a good job,” he said.

A flash of pride crossed her face. "Tack," she said and placed our purchase in a small, brown bag. On the front of the bag was a stamped heart with the words, "God Jul."

]]>A Day Trip To Skansen Christmas MarketDromoland Castle, An Irish Pony, And Three Generations of WomenIrelandIngrid McQuiveyWed, 23 May 2018 01:58:43 +0000https://www.exploringhumanity.org/blogexploringhumanity/2018/5/22/dromoland-castle-an-irish-pony-and-three-generations-of-women5b0413be9f87701b3fd4bae6:5b043e3e6d2a735b97101e6e:5b04c93f88251ba6e04aa2c0A 16th-century Renaissance castle located in County Clare, Ireland, stands proudly in the early afternoon drizzle. I am waiting outside on a circular drive with my 86-year-old grandmother, Yvonne, and my mother, Lynne. We make up three generations of women, and we are staying at the historic hotel, Dromoland, on Mother's Day. My Irish-American grandmother -- one of 70 million people around the world who claim Irish ancestry—has Alzheimer's Disease, and this is the trip of her life.

We pay for a pony and trap ride around Dromoland's gothic gardens. Our jarvey, Sean, soon arrives and guides the horse and trap next to us. He hops down from the horse and offers his hand. We accept it and climb in. We shuffle around and try to distribute our weight and Sean welcomes us with a thick Irish brogue. My grandmother’s forehead creases.

"Are you sure the carriage can hold this much weight?" Grandma Yvonne has always loved animals, and even her mental condition does not trump her nature.

Sean reaches for the reins and steadies the horse. He answers, "The horse can hold the weight."

He waits until we are settled, then huddles into the end of the trap through a small door. It is a modest, 18th-century buggy with two enormous wheels and seats running along both sides. It smells of horse and antiquity. Paddy is large in stature and chocolate in color, with patches of vintage-white covering his nose and feathered feet. Sean sports an ebony bowler hat and a striped sweater, with a solid avocado-green farmer's jacket covering it. A thick leather belt secures his tan pants.

Sitting across from Sean, I study his pronounced, yet not unpleasant, nose. He is handsome. I look away, brushing the thought away to a proper place. He raises the reins and Paddy gently leaps forward. Clop, the hooves beat upon the ground. The trap wheels turn around and around, and we move steadily to our first stop: a pond's sundial and a "Hermit's Cell."

"Do you see that sundial?” Sean points to the right and shuffles to produce a photo album. His hand then motions to the left. "Do you see those pillars?" We nod. Sean taps a photograph in his album and explains: "The pillars are standing throughout the entire Dromoland Estate. They have been placed so the sun will fall directly over the sundial, through the pillars. In the course of a few months, they will forecast the exact month and day."

We lean forward, fixated on his photographs, and he weaves a story of gossamer threads: a world of Celtic manors, ladies of the house, and pillars of light. Tales of the hidden hermit's cell follow as Sean directs our attention to a small, hallowed alcove built into a hillside. "Do you see that cave? It dates to AD 1041." The tone of Sean’s voice changes. "Wealthy, Irish landowners paid hermits to live on their land and pay penance for their sins. The practice was similar to the paid penances Martin Luther protested."

My mother tucks a blanket around my grandmother’s body. My grandmother wears an ivory wool sweater that we bought for her at Giant’s Causeway. It is hand-knitted with faux-leather buttons lining the front. My mother told me that my grandmother had always wanted an Irish sweater. She is proud of her heritage. In 1892, the first Ellis Island immigrant was an Irish woman named Annie Moore. She was fifteen when she led hundreds down the gangplank into New York. The Irish diaspora has resulted in an Irish genealogy center in every Irish county.

The sky clears and Sean shifts his body weight, leaning against the trap. I notice he is in pain, but he continues his story about the hermit's cell. "If no food was left outside by the landowner, then he knew his hermit was fasting because he had given him no food to eat. A fire at the back of the cave was lit for the hermit to keep warm. This activated the cave walls with shadows, which the hermit saw, getting rid of the demons of the landlord." Sean leans into a crooked wooden cane, supporting the weight of his body.

I can't resist and I ask, "What happened to your arm?"

In a solemn tone, yet without complaint, he answers, "My usual horse was killed by a hit-and-run driver a few days ago. The driver hit my trap and my shoulder was dislocated."

"I'm so sorry,” my mother and I say in unison.

"Why are you not at the doctor?" I ask.

"I cannot afford private insurance, so I am on a waiting list. It will be a while before I am treated by a doctor.”

During the discussion on healthcare, my grandmother sits quietly. I hope she is warm. My grandmother is different now: innocent, frail, childlike. She calls my mom, "Mother" and I am "that woman." There are fleeting moments on our trip when she is lucid, and she will say, "Oh, Ingrid."

During some of my college years, I lived with my grandmother. She had been a strong woman with a mean streak if she disliked you but was kind and warm if she liked you. She was always welcoming to my friends and me, and I believe that my active college schedule brought life to her everyday routine. My mother once told me the origin of my grandmother's sometimes unpleasant temperament. She was bullied as a child, causing lifelong self-esteem problems. Being larger than her petite sister, her peers would ask if she stole all the food from her. Now, on our trip, she was full of joy and laughter, all memories of bullying gone. All memories of Ireland would be kidnapped, too. It saddens me.

It is late afternoon and Sean jumps out of the trap, grabbing the reins, pulling the horse uphill. My grandmother asks, "Can I get out of the cart? Would that help the horse?"

We arrive near a second home located on the grounds. Sean reveals it once belonged to a famous actor, Richard Harris, who had starred in Camelot. He had the house built to overlook the estate. He was not the landowner but found pleasure in the grounds. I smile as I recognize the musical, and I turn to see Dromoland Castle resting in our view. I understand Richard Harris' obsession: King Arthur, Sir Lancelot, Guinevere and the Knights of the Round Table breathe throughout the stone structure and the gardens, awakening the Arthurian Legend.

During the end of our trap ride, my mother asks about the conflict between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Sean places his finger to his mouth. "We don't talk about that."

Around dinner time, the trap rounds its way to a stop; I want to stay seated forever with three generations of women on Mother's Day. My legs waver as we climb out, and I thank Sean, sliding a tip into his hand.

Later, I ask my mother her feelings about Dromoland. She says, "It was a culmination of a fairy-tale experience; staying in a castle and being treated like a queen.” It is my hope that one day my Irish-American grandmother will rediscover it.

]]>Dromoland Castle, An Irish Pony, And Three Generations of WomenOded Wagenstein: The Man Behind the CameraNational GeographicIngrid McQuiveyWed, 23 May 2018 01:48:44 +0000https://www.exploringhumanity.org/blogexploringhumanity/2018/5/22/oded-wagenstein-the-man-behind-the-camera5b0413be9f87701b3fd4bae6:5b043e3e6d2a735b97101e6e:5b04c5f603ce649de6a5c975Oded Wagenstein may be a culture photographer who works with the Hebrew edition of National Geographic, but he is so much more than just a cameraman. He remembers most of the names of people he’s photographed, and takes his grandmother’s advice when it comes to his images. He challenges hundreds of students to photograph strangers in the market. And he overcomes his fear from talking with strangers as he captures their portrait. Oded Wagenstein is a friend.

I first met Israeli photographer and educator Oded Wagenstein through email, and weeks later, being a photographer myself, I asked if I could interview him. He agreed.

Oded texted me fourteen minutes before the allotted interview time and let me know he was ready. We connected by phone and I asked, “How do you want me to address you?” He responded in a thick Israeli accent, “Oded.”

Copyrighted photo taken by Oded Wagenstein.

I asked my first question, “How would you define the power of people?”

Oded responded in a quick manner, “For me, people are the most interesting thing in the world, and photography is a platform which allows me to see people better. When I say ‘see,’ I mean it allows me to look into their souls. I believe the camera can be used as a barricade between people, similar to a weapon, or you can use it wisely, and it can become a bridge—a bridge between cultures, between different people. That’s what I do. I try to create bridges.”

He continued while I listened intently. “From time to time, I just indulge myself in conversation and forget to make the image in the end. For me, the process of using the camera is an excuse to get to know someone, to get to know a different culture. I try to find something which connects us, something universal.

I see the power of people in that all of us are from different cultures, but we really are one—all of us age, we have families, and will eventually die. This is the thing I try to bring into my photography. Instead of trying to capture the exotic, or capture our differences, I try to capture similarities and universal themes. That is the power of the people: we all share common aspects, the things that make us human.”

“As a photographer, what type of voice do you feel you bring to your audience?”

He said, “I once heard my students talk about having a photogenic identity. The students had heard the term and asked, ‘Do I have a photogenic identity? Do I have a voice?’ I’m not sure I have a voice. I’m not sure I have something to say. I’m not sure if it is interesting. I will tell you the only thing I do: I see something, I feel something about it, and I transfer it using visuals into another person. I am trying to share the things I have felt and if they are universal enough, my viewers will feel the same.

That is also the way I review my images: I show someone an image and if I manage to transform a feeling I had into someone’s heart and mind—the same feeling I had one week ago, one year ago, ten years ago—I have created a successful image. A year ago, my grandma asked me why people are so sad and melancholy in my images, and she was upset about it. So, maybe this is my voice? But I don’t know. I’m just trying to share my experience and the way I see people.”

I thanked him for his answer and he said, “with joy.” It was the second time he had used those exact words and I thought to myself: What a happy phrase. I filed it in my memory for future use.

He added as an afterthought to his previous comment, “Sometimes you need someone else to tell you about your photographic voice. I am hearing my own voice through my ears, but it would be much easier for someone else to tell me what my voice sounds like. So my grandma — although she said it with a bit of disappointment or anger, because she wanted to see happy pictures — helped me to see a repeating theme, or style, in my images which, from time to time, are melancholy.”

I swept my hair behind my ear and asked him about the most influential people in his life.

“I have so many. I fall in love every five minutes!” he exclaimed. Oded pondered for a moment then continued, “The first would be my parents. I have a father who is a chemist and my mother is a teacher. My mother taught me the importance of enjoying art, music, and discussion. And my father, he taught me about stability. He taught me dreams are important, but you need to make a living by them. Every choice I have made they stood behind me and supported it.”

Copyrighted photo taken by Oded Wagenstein.

He went on. “Next would be my wife, whom I married two weeks ago.”

I interjected with my congratulations. He thanked me and said that he and his wife had been together for eleven years. “She has given me the freedom to travel, to wander. It is not easy, but I think that is important.”

He circled back to his instructors as the final influencers, saying, “I try to learn from them. And in reference to your first question — about the power of people — you can learn from anybody you meet. When I’m looking at a sunset, I’m not learning anything, I’m just enjoying the colors and the views. But when I’m speaking to someone, I’m always in a learning process, even if he tells me how he cooks his meal. There are so many people who are important to me.”

At this point, our conversation shifted from the topic of learning through others to human connection. I briefly shared a recent train conversation I had with an Italian medical student named Luca, who impressed me with his knowledge of the American medical system.

My train story led Oded into his philosophy on portraits: “You know, finishing off a portrait is to portray someone, but to tell something about the person, it must tell a story. The image in your ID, or passport, is just an image of you. It is not a portrait. If you are shooting someone with a telephoto lens, from a distance, you cannot tell that story. The story will be superficial. You can tell something about their culture, or their status, which is their living, because you can see their clothes.

But if you want to tell the story of a person, you must speak with them. And the thing I want to emphasize in this interview is: it wasn’t—and still is not—easy for me to speak with people. Most people think that a portrait photographer needs to be someone who can mingle with everyone and who is friendly. It’s not me. For me, I use the camera as a platform to challenge myself to approach people. I use the camera almost as a therapy. It is important to know, because there are many people out there, including my students, who have this fear of approaching someone. I ask them to use that as a challenge, and not as a gift that either you are born with it, or not.”

His response got me thinking about the nature of fear and and I asked him how he handled it. Oded revealed that he’s pessimistic in his approach to handling fear. When faced with a difficult situation, he will ask himself, “What is the worst possible thing that can happen right now?”

He elaborated: “When I am approaching strangers with the intention of interacting and photographing them, I think about the worst possible thing that could happen and for me, it would be for them to say ‘no.’ But it’s okay, because I have prepared for it.” He paused before continuing, “That is the way I approach my fears when traveling to foreign or dangerous countries and photographing people. It has helped me overcome my fears, to see that things are not so bad.”

I was curious to know his thoughts on how cultural photography influences communication across cultures.

Copyrighted photo taken by Oded Wagenstein.

He said, “In English, it is called Travel Photography. Culture photography, I believe, is something I made up. It is the first time I have heard it called that. I don’t like the word ‘travel photography’, because travel photography suggests you have to travel. For example, I think there are cultural moments at your family dinner table, which are probably very different than mine. I don’t think to be in travel photography, you have to travel anywhere. The most important thing I teach in my college course is anyone can shoot a wrinkled face in India, but not everyone can see the beauty of their own family, or their own town. So, that’s what we do as photographers, we travel together in the universal and the local.”

I learned as we chatted that Oded Wagenstein’s childhood memories did not include many friends. But as he grew into his teen years, he used the camera to make new friends. In a humble manner, he confessed to me that now he has “thousands of friends,” with emails and telephone numbers, and he knows the names and stories of approximately ninety-five percent of the people in his portraits.

“That’s what I do,” he said. “I don’t create images. I make new friends. Maybe this era in my childhood — this period of having small groups, or no friends — helped shaped me to what I am today.”

I asked him his age. He revealed he had recently celebrated his thirtieth birthday. I recognized his birthday was near his wedding date and chimed in with my congratulations.With cheer in his voice, he remarked, “Thank you, thank you very much.”

A few weeks before, I had studied Oded’s past interviews and read his ebook, The Visual Storyteller. My next question centered around the wisdom and depth of knowledge he had displayed in interviews and in his photographic craft. I asked him, “How have the people you’ve met helped you develop this wisdom?”

He said, “There is a saying: ‘If you are not traveling, it’s like reading the first page of the book.’ For me, traveling and meeting different people and cultures has taught me about family and other important things in life, such as education. At home, I am a very strict person. I like order. You can see it in my photos. They are clean and orderly. I like things to be planned in advance. When I’m traveling, I am the opposite. I like people to invite me into their houses, their weddings, their funerals. And from those people, I have learned. I don’t know if I have wisdom, but when you travel you learn.”

Oded explained to me he is trying his best to be a good ambassador as he travels. He works hard to seek a bridge, to be loving, and to have patience. He endeavors to respect and learn about every culture in the world—from Muslim to Buddhist and everywhere in between.

He said, “It is good to be able to place your roots anywhere, then cut them, and live in another place. When I’m in Tajikistan, I am trying to my best to dress and eat and speak like a Tajik. When I am in New York, I try to do the same. I have fans from all over the world, such as Pakistan and Iran, who write to me, and I am trying hard to be a citizen of the world.”

I was touched by his statement. I wished it were true of everyone.

Curious about his role as an educator, I turned my thoughts toward his students. “In what ways have your students surprised you?”

“That is a beautiful question,” he said. His voice increased in volume as he went on: “They remind me each and every time that we are all the same. We think we are so special and that our fears are unique to ourselves, but they are not. We all have fear of approaching someone from a different culture — being a bit shy about it. Some talk about their fear. Some make excuses about it.

This may sound like a contrast to my first statement, but my students have also surprised me in their point of view. We all stand in a specific place and everyone brings a different background and perspective — a voice, as you said before. On one hand, we are all the same in terms of universal feelings and fears, but on the other hand, each one of us has our own perspective and voice. These are the things which surprise me about my students, they aresimilar, yet so different. It makes things interesting.

And finally, in the past, they have surprised me when they step out of their comfort zone. When they allow themselves to do something they may have feared before, but find they are enjoying it with a big smile.” Oded’s voice cracks in pride.

I didn’t need to see him in person to detect his fondness for his students—I could hear it in his tone and the words he chose.

“That’s my job as an educator,” he continued. “I challenge my students to go to the market to photograph someone. I send them with fear, and let them come back with a big smile from interacting with someone else.”

In this point of the interview, I was feeling more comfortable in our conversation. I told him I appreciated his approach to teaching and asked my next question, “When you travel, how have you seen the local people of an area overcome difficult things?”

“I don’t like the cliche of being ‘poor and happy,’” he said. “Sometimes as Westerners we travel the world and we meet people with nothing and we say to ourselves oh, but look, they are smiling. I have a story:

I went to Laos and I met a tribal lady from the Akha tribe in the Northern part of Laos. She showed me a coin from the time the French ruled in Laos. The coin was from the early twentieth century and it had the Statue of Liberty—you know, it’s a gift from France to the United States—on it. I told her in excitement, ‘You know I saw that in person. I saw the Statue in New York.’

Then I asked her, ‘What is your dream?’ I was so hoping she would tell me she would like to travel to New York to see the Statue.

And she said, ‘Do you know what my dream is? My dream is to fix my bad tooth in the nearest town, but I don’t have the money to go there. It’s like twenty minutes.’

So I told myself, ‘You are so stupid for bringing your Western dreams of fulfilling yourself and achieving your goals, when there are people who just want their tooth to feel better.’”

Oded was getting passionate now. “There are people who manage to live in very hard — very hard — circumstances. I don’t know if they are happy, but they have overcome, and I think it is wonderful. It has taught me to humble and happy with what I have. I see from time to time my students give candy and presents to people. I don’t like it. I think it is arrogant to bring gifts to someone who did not ask for it. If someone is hosting you in their home—yes, bring a present—but those people who are giving away presents and candy like it is a milkshake? I don’t like it. I have seen people who are not happy, but they are proud of who they are.”

He stopped for a brief moment, then said, “I hope I told a nice story. I hope I answered your question.”

I assured him he had. He said, “That is the path your question took me. It took me to that story and that feeling.”

I confessed I wanted to hear more of his stories.

There was a long pause and I shuffled through my papers. I had been so entranced with his story I forgot what question I wanted to ask next. He waited for a bit and said, “Throw away your pages and ask whatever you like. Don’t be afraid of all those pages.”

I said okay, and stammered to form my next question. I realized he had been right.

I asked Oded Wagenstein how he had changed over the years.

He told me a story in response.

“A few years ago I was working in a park in Tajikistan — which is a Muslim country on the southern tip of Central Asia near the Afghan border — and I saw a wedding. It was a wedding where the bride and groom and everybody was happy. I took a few photographs of them without too much conversation, which I don’t usually do, but felt it was right in the situation. I did not want to interfere. One of the groomsmen approached me and asked if I wanted to join them.

I was faced with a dilemma: on the one hand, it was a wonderful opportunity to shoot unique and amazing images of a Tajik wedding. On the other, the language barrier did not allow me to ask several questions I had in mind. I knew they would not hurt me. I knew if they invited me to the wedding, they did so out of respect to me as a foreigner. But what I didn’t know was where we were going, who we were coming back with, and who was responsible for me getting back safely.

Copyrighted photo taken by Oded Wagenstein.

Plus, I’m vegetarian. In those places they eat only meat. I asked myself, ‘Should I bring food, or a present?’ I didn’t know, but I said yes. I entered the car and four other guys immediately got into the car with me. The driver of the car drove really, really fast, playing loud music, with everyone singing out of the window.

I thought to myself, ‘Maybe this wasn’t the best decision to join this group.’ Then I used my pessimistic approach in solving problems: I thought of the worst thing that could happen. And it was a car accident. Then I realized, well, that can happen in Tel Aviv too, and is more likely. A car accident can happen anywhere. I believe the hardest thing would be to drive for hours and hours, as we are right on the border of Afghanistan. And I would like to come back.

I thought of how they may put me in the middle of the desert and say, ‘If you want to go back home, you can hitchhike from here.’

Then I asked myself, ‘Okay if this happens, what will I do? I have four hundred dollars in my pocket. I have cash. I can pay the men to just get me back.’

That theoretical solution helped me to stay in the car — not calm, but without hysteria. After half an hour, we arrived at a restaurant, and it was a perfect wedding and event. Ienjoyed it so much.

In the end, they all got drunk so I didn’t have anybody to take me back. So one of them invited me to his house to share his home. They had two rooms in the house. I slept in the kitchen and the whole family slept in the living room.”

He finished his story and laughed in a full, hearty manner. He told me he could not remember my original question, but I had wanted stories. I laughed, too. Suddenly he seemed to remember my question and he jumped to continue talking.

“I think this is the thing that surprises me about who I am today,” he said. “I try to challenge myself, to overcome my fear. I believe fear is important. For example, I have asthma and as I am speaking with you, I have an inhaler in my pocket. I am ready in case an attack happens, however, I do not let asthma stop me from doing things. I carry my inhaler and my money, and I trust things will be okay, even if bad things were to happen. I know how to manage.

This is the thing that surprises me about myself: if you told me ten years ago I would travel to a foreign country and get inside a car with four strangers who would let me stay at their house, I would not have believed you. The thing that surprises me is that through my fears and pains, I still do what I need and want.”

I thanked him and I heard the smile in his voice as he said, “With joy.”

I asked, “How do you want to be remembered?” He stumbled over a potential answer as he looked for the words to express himself. The answer did not come. “I need some time to think about that question. Can we come back to it?” he asked.

“No problem,” I said.

I wanted to know if he had a lucky pair of shoes, or something like that, so I asked him. I smiled and thought, here I am asking a National Geographic photographer if he has a lucky pair of shoes.

“I hope you don’t mind,” I said.

He laughed heartily. “No, it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

His answer was perfect: “I am not a religious person, but in Judaism we have a small thing we like to call the Prayer of the Road. It is something you read before you travel, to ask to be safe and to come back safely. I keep the prayer in my pocket and read it every time I am at the airport, which is about once a month during this time of year. I also carry a Hebrew song called “A Kiss in the Pocket.” My mother gave it to me. It asks to keep you safe and warm wherever you are. So I carry the Prayer of the Road and the Kiss in the Pocket everywhere. But that’s it. I don’t have a lucky pair of shoes.”

I chuckled and told him I didn’t care about him not owning a lucky pair of shoes. I liked his answer much better. I was nearing the end of my questions. “What is one of the greatest accomplishments you’ve seen in someone else?”

He didn’t hesitate to answer. “I had sent my students to the market for an assignment. I asked them to photograph someone’s portrait and get their name. I also wanted them to indulge in a conversation with the person. When one of my students came back with her photo of a person, she told me it was the first time she had done it and burst into tears. I asked her why she was crying. She told me a few weeks ago, as a student in university, she had gone into a class. She did not know if she was in the right class or not, but she was so ashamed of approaching anyone to ask, she just sat there — like the way she put it — like a dog.

For her, approaching a person in a market was life-changing. She said she will never just sit in this type of situation again. She will never sit like a dog without speaking. Again, this is the perfect example of using photography and portrait-making to make life easier and better. This is an extreme story, and not all my students react the same, but I will always remember the story of this girl. She approached a stranger for the first time because I had asked her to do it.”

Copyrighted photo taken by Oded Wagenstein.

As he told the story, I imagined the scenes. I imagined the girl who sat like a dog and I cheered for her accomplishments. I expressed my gratitude to Oded in telling me the story and he repeated, “With joy. With joy.”

I started with another question: “You are known for your visual storytelling.”

He interjected and gave me a hint about a new ebook being published. He told me it will focus on how to tell a story with composition.I asked if I could announce that in the article. He agreed and I continued with my question.

“You are known for your visual storytelling. Why do you think great storytelling photography has the power to influence people?”

“I think by definition a story is a few events that carry one after another,” he said. “I don’t think a single image can tell a story because a story by definition is something with a beginning, middle and end—one event after another. But I think if your image is an emotion-maker, then people will imagine the story. I think this is the important thing — to let the viewers imagine the story. You give them a small slice — one moment of the story and let them imagine it. It’s like a good horror movie. A well-made movie will make people jump in the same spot in Japan, in Israel, in New York. I think that’s the key to a good story. You make people imagine their own story, with their perspective, and connect on a universal level. If I meant to make you laugh with my image, and instead made you cry, that’s not a good image. That’s the way I review my images. I ask people to tell me how they feel. If most of the people are talking to me about certain similar emotions, then I know I was correct and on the spot.”

“That’s a great idea,” I said. “I had never thought to do that with my photography.” I had a couple more questions for him before we wrapped up: who was his personal hero and how did he want to be remembered?

He said he worried his answer might be cliche, but he said it anyway: Steve McCurry. “I know Steve McCurry is the hero of millions of other photojournalists and culture photographers. But I think the way he has managed to tell universal stories with only one pair of eyes and a face is marvelous. I had the privilege of interviewing him and he is a modest and nice person. He manages to get into the story and take me inside the story, as if I were with him.”

We returned to the question on how he wanted to be remembered and he sighed. It seemed to be a difficult question for him to answer.

“I think for me as a photographer,” he said, “I would like to be remembered as someone who gave you an interesting ride, or point of view. Someone who made you feel something. Right now, in today’s world, we are bombarded with visuals, images. If I inspire someone to take a second — take a break in the crazy race of life — and look into someone’s eyes and feel something, that is the thing I want to do. As an educator — which is more important to me than being a photographer — I want to help people overcome their fears the way I did. I am not teaching anything — anything — that I didn’t do myself, or believe myself, or try myself. So I think I want to be remembered as a storyteller, an emotion maker, and an educator who helped people overcome their fears, as I do right now. In thinking about my voice, or my legacy, I’m not there yet.”

And I thought, Oded, it would be a joy to watch you accomplish it.

Oded Wagenstein is a culture photographer, and a contributing photographer and author for National Geographic, National Geographic Traveler, Time Out (Israeli editions) and Getty Images. He is an author of three photography books and when he is not eating weird food in an Uzbek wedding or a Cuban Santeria ceremony, he shares his knowledge with his students in international photography workshops.

All photography is copyrighted and was taken by Oded Wagenstein.

]]>Oded Wagenstein: The Man Behind the CameraA 1968 Nursing Tour Through EuropeIngrid McQuiveyWed, 23 May 2018 01:08:53 +0000https://www.exploringhumanity.org/blogexploringhumanity/2018/5/22/a-1968-nursing-tour-through-europe5b0413be9f87701b3fd4bae6:5b043e3e6d2a735b97101e6e:5b04bcd7758d46cab830ec5fIt was near the lunch hour when I pulled up a chair at Bonnie Elerding's kitchen table and placed my recorder next to a clear-glass bowl full of sugar. A plethora of cookbooks, travel, and ornithology guidebooks and bills littered the table and hinted of Bonnie's pastimes. I had arrived a half an hour earlier and snapped photographic stills of Bonnie and an entryway relic: a bronze, Arab cavalier sculpted by the Nineteenth-century French artist, Antoine Louis Barye. Through my camera lens, I observed the statue's parallel lines flowing downward and how they gave the impression of movement to the motionless mold of mixed copper and tin.

If I could say I wanted to be like someone when I grow up, I would look to Bonnie. A retired nurse by profession and a wandering nomad at heart, Bonnie has traveled — no, not just traveled — but explored, over fifty countries by boat, train, bus, and walking. She was a young nurse of twenty-six when she ventured on her first tour through Europe. Now, her current calendar years equate to seventy-four. But despite her age, the gallivanting lifestyle she began so long ago remains unaltered. Her globetrotting spirit and adventurous experiences could top a list of most influential travelers, but as she does not maintain a travel blog, you will never see her showcased in a modern-day countdown. The life-altering, postcard moments experienced by Bonnie are pure and unadulterated from multitudinous crowds, like her first trip as a young nurse in the summer of 1968.

Bonnie plopped down in a kitchen chair next to me and introduced herself for my recorder. “My name is Bonnie Elerding, but I have gone by Bonnie Hall for most of my life.” She paused, brushed back her silver and blonde hair, and waited for me to write down her words. “I had a girlfriend that wanted to do a nursing tour together. We hired a travel company to plan where we would visit in Europe. The trip came to us all preplanned, and by then we had twenty-two nurses signed up. Some of us were older nurses, and some of us were new graduates.”

The nursing tour began in Amsterdam. Bonnie said, “Amsterdam was the first time I had eaten pickled herring, and it was so good, and nobody else liked it.” She interrupted the story of her past. “Would you like to try pickled herring? I have some right now.” I declined, and she adjusted a large, round, watch face on her arm. She continued, “The nurses walked down to the “Red Light District in Amsterdam.” She confessed with a giggle, “You know, I was so naive, and the others were making fun of me because I didn’t know what it was all about.” I imagined the scene--Bonnie in her youth with auburn hair and light-colored eyes, searching--and laughed.

Bonnie said, “The hospital in Amsterdam was brand new, and the staff could not wait to show it to the American Nurses. They wanted to show us their brand new Tomogram X-ray machine.” A photo album sat in front of her, and her fingers played with the edges of it. “At that time, the Tomogram enabled us to take an X-ray from several angles, instead of the flat X-ray pictures we had in 1968. A tomogram gave us multiple photos of different perspectives.” Her hands outlined an elliptical image in the air. “You could tell if a tumor was wide or had density. In those days that was a big deal.”

I first met Bonnie at a medical presentation. She was attending the presentation with an outgoing friend, who invited my husband and me to dinner. We accepted the invitation and that night I ate yellow curry and listened to Bonnie’s travel stories. She told me of her plans to adopt and of her next trip to Africa, and I told her about my profession in travel media. We shared and reminisced and forgot our differences in age as we shared our ardor for travel.

Bonnie and her family took a road trip across the United States when she was twelve. As much as she enjoyed the trip, nothing she had seen in the US was similar to the first time she had seen the shining spires of Germany’s Cologne Cathedral. And when the nurses traveled to Lucerne, Switzerland. Bonnie said, “We were served chicken at every meal. At that time, it was thought that Americans liked chicken. It wasn’t until Rome that we got something different. They served us spaghetti.” She laughed and continued, “Also, in Lucerne, they put on a Bi ‘rish, Swiss, mountain dancing program for us.”

“What does Bi ‘rish mean?” I said.

“It refers to the Southern part of Germany.”

Bonnie’s speech slowed as she continued to describe the dance, “They have the big, long horns they blow. And they wore lederhosen (leather slacks), and slapped their feet and legs.” With a sudden movement, she popped out of her chair and demonstrated the dance. I picked up my camera and photographed her. She giggled as she danced and said, “I should go get my lederhosen, but I threw them out.”

Bonnie reached out for a European map which sat on the table in front of her and retraced her 1968 nursing tour with her finger. “We traveled over the Alps down from Switzerland to Italy,” she said. She stopped tracing for a moment and remembered out loud, “That’s what it is, that’s exactly what it is.” She paused. “In those days, we traveled by bus on these massive, switchback roads that the bus could barely corner. There were no freeways. We spent all day looking at the switchbacks we had already gone down and the switchbacks we were going down. It was kinda scary. There was a steep grade on different sections of the mountains. Some of us were just starting our life, and we did not want to die on the side of a mountain in the Alps.”

The nurses arrived in Venezia and eventually made their way to Florence, then Rome, where they visited a 400-year-old hospital, Fatebenefratelli, on the world’s smallest inhabited island, Isola Tiberina. A few days later, I researched Isola Tiberina. I read on Fodor’s Travel the Romans had sheathed the entire island with marble to make it look like Aesculapius’s (the god of healing) ship.

After Rome, the women traveled to Geneva where they spent a morning with members of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Bonnie gazed out the window and said, “The International Red Cross would ship people and equipment to different places in the world. Some of the challenges they faced were finding individuals who specialized in sterile technique.” The nurses also visited the International Student Nurses Association. The association encouraged the nurses to work in another country besides America.

The nurses gathered on a bus and endured a long ride to a Parisian hospital. Bonnie said, “The Parisian hospital was fascinating because all the nurses wore high heels and no nylons.” She paused and added, “At least some of them did not wear nylons. That was a shock to me.” The American nurses had an opportunity to tour a Parisian nursery located in the hospital.

She continued. “The nurses wore masks and gloves, and they wrapped the babies to make sure they did not breathe germs. They were very proud of their incubators. At that time we were just starting to use incubators with oxygenation and were discovering that too much exposure to oxygen was not good for baby's eyes. The Parisians were up on that too, just like we were.”

Bonnie described the Parisian method for sterilization, “The Parisian nurses would wrap the things they were going to use for surgery, including their linens, into a big package. The entire package would go into a sterilization machine for a given amount of time until it was totally sterile from high heat and slight moisture. The moisture dissipated in the high heat, and the package would come out the machine and cool. Everything within the outside wrap would be sterile and ready to take into surgery, which was not unlike us at the time.” She paused, then added, “But they had a more modern sterilization machine.”

The nurses flew from Paris to London. Bonnie waved her hand toward me and said, “In London, we had meetings with the people that had started the National Health Service, the socialized medicine that everybody in America was upset about. I don't remember who it was that we met, but they were telling us the problems they had in starting it.”

Her eyes revealed delight as she transitioned from medicine into sightseeing. “We walked over the London Bridge, which is gone now. It was this little, teeny bridge and it had all these curio shops on it with little places with rugs hanging between them. It was pretty much only foot traffic.” As she spoke, I imagined the scene to be like one that was found in an old Hollywood film, and I wished I could have played a part on the big screen.

The final stop of the nursing tour was Shannon, Ireland. The nurses visited Bunratty Castle. They were given “too much mead” as they listened to a multitude of choir performances and watched dancing. I heard the pride in Bonnie’s voice as she said, “The nurses all flew home from Shannon, and I got on a bus all by myself to Galway Bay for my personal tour.” I applauded her bravery.

I readied my pen and asked, “Why was this nursing trip an epiphany for you?”

An uneven pile of yellowed photo albums, with inked dates and places along the spines, were stacked on a chair behind Bonnie. Maps--some folded, some not--covered the table and floor and surrounded her. She sat amongst the travel stories of her life and said, “By the end of my trip, I realized how exciting the world was and how people from so many different backgrounds are as human and real as we are. They loved the same things as us: kindness, education, interpersonal relationships. We were so different, yet so much the same. That was my epiphany.”